[nzlug] (OT) Sorbs etc

[Daniel Pittman]

Tony Wills <ajwills at paradise.net.nz> writes:
> At 09:09 11/10/2006, Cliff Pratt wrote:
>>...
>>>Cliff Pratt wrote:
>>>
>>>> Greylisting is an evil perversion of the SMTP protocol and if I find
>>>> any servers using it I blacklist them. Nasty obnoxious bandwidth and
>>>> spool space wasters!
>> ...Greylisting adds a load to my servers. Greylisting is at the bounds
>> of the RFC and totally subverts the idea of retrying failed sends. The
>> retry facility is intended for temporary errors, not for SPAM control!
>
> My original point is the RBLs that block properly set-up mail servers
> that have never sent any SPAM, just because they're from a range of
> addresses that someone has decided are 'not proper' is a much greater
> perversion (if not violation) of the RFC.  

I don't think that word means what you think it means either...

To the best of my knowledge there is no RFC, IETF approved or otherwise,
that mandates that any Internet host must accept any traffic that it
doesn't feel like accepting.

Certainly none of the SMTP RFC documents mandate anything about servers
accepting network traffic, and no part of the SMTP protocol defines any
responsibility to accept any email you don't feel like -- no matter what
the reason.


Hell, if I felt like rejecting out of hard one in three emails because,
well, the random numbers said so I would be completely and perfectly in
line with the RFC, in letter and in spirit.


Claiming that an RBL that blocks "dial-up" ranges -- a stupid and
pointless effort, in my opinion -- is violating the RFC weakens your
otherwise reasonable claim that this is a bad idea.

After all, if you make claims that are unsubstantiated and that
dubiously attempt to claim that there is some rule forbidding whatever
it is that you don't like, well...  

> Yes greylisting is a perversion and I wouldn't recommend it for high
> volume applications, but it works for me (tm) :-)
>
> Maybe it comes down to RBLs are useful if used intelligently (qv
> Donald Gordon's earlier post), and greylisting is useful if set-up
> properly (I'll go and review my setup :-).

I certainly agree with this, and with your view that dial-up
blacklisting is also foolish.

Regards,
        Daniel
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